Backup has been an important aspect of computing since the invention of persistent memory systems, such as disk drives. With increasing data storage and personal computer (“PC”) usage trends, the need for backup solutions is growing in importance. Medium sized and large businesses can typically afford data protection solutions, such as backup systems, and have a wide range of choices and an entire industry available to support them. However, the technology and products available to the typical consumer, home based business, or small business for protecting against data loss has not advanced in step with these trends. Yet such users are doing more and more important work on their PCs, and storing more and more precious, irreplaceable data. At the same time the quality of PC hardware, particularly consumer grade hard drives seems to be declining, increasing the risk of data loss.
Historically data loss was protected against by backing up user data files. Backing up system files and application was commonly avoided to save backup storage space and time. After a failure, a user typically re-installed the PC's operating system and applications from the original disks in addition to restoring lost data files. As Internet usage via the PC has grown, new variations of data loss have developed. Down-loaded applications, for example, are becoming increasingly common—but it is also common for such applications to no longer be available when needed for a system restore. It is also increasingly common for a user to spend many hours setting up and configuring a PC—but it is uncommon for typical backup products to preserve every aspect of the PCs configuration. Thus, after restoring files following a system failure, the user is forced to spend the time required, again, to re-configure the PC to restore it to its pre-failure condition.
In addition to the significant time complete system restoration may take, common storage devices such as disk drives are becoming increasingly large in terms of storage capacity. It is now common for a new PC to include a disk drive with 200 GBs or more of storage space. A typical small office or home may have several such PCs. The amount of time and storage space required to create backups of these PCs using conventional mechanisms is often prohibitive. The amount of time required to restore from such backups may also be significant.